Trade journals are packed with new switching vocabulary and
communications methodology. Technological evolution is almost a
revolution, carrying office automation from the electric typewriter to
electronic typewriter to word processor to personal computer to
computer-to-computer communications.

Yesteryear, the talk was of how to afford a computer. Today,
computer costs are within the reach of all, but communication costs are
spiraling upwards, giving birth to new technologies to speed messages,
both voice and data; to address, store and receive messages remotely; to
bypass present transmission systems; to communicate faster and more
accurately; and to lower communication costs and increase communications
efficiency.

Faced with the increasing costs of energy, communications and
travel, and with the need to communicate nationwide and globally, to
teach, to noninvasively diagnose medical problems, we're finding
solutions in today's computer-based information-movement
revolution. This is the age of information movement, of faster learning,
of developing "one tongue" in which to
communicate--technology.

We're now seeing the evolutionary growth of
networking--between man and machine, between man and man, between
machine and machine--to "tie it all together," to universally
interface, to not only have communicative compatibility but also to save
the systems already installed. Interfacing is an answer to the high
cost of obsolescence.

Around the late '60s, the Defense Advanced Research Project
Agency gave birth to ARPANET--a stab at a resource-sharing network meant
to provide state-of-the-art communications between a variety of
different host computers, so that hardware, software and data resources
could be shared, convenient and economical for a variety of users. In
the mid-'70s, ARPANET came under the Defense Communications Agency;
its interface message processors were minicomputer based.

Today's networks have evolved employing multibus technologies
and methodologies, with expandable multi-processors that serve many
hosts. They offer redundancy, high reliability, excellent response time
and growth potential, thereby minimizing costs and maximizing
efficiency. Message switching has been used to establish communication
between nodes. In circuit switching, source and destination were
connected by a dedicated communication path.

Network Control Centers Enter

The evolution today is to tie it all together into one switch,
meaning that failure has to be detected, repaired quickly and monitored
continuously--thus the entry of network control centers. So ARPANET has
led the way to the design of today's message packet-switching
networks, interfacing a mixture of different computers, terminals,
communication nodes and distributors, over large geographical areas.

Engineering now advances quickly--new message protocols, switches,
software technologies, routing algorithms, data-communication
methodologies and transmissions. Computerized networks, such as
Telenet, the government-sponsored Autodin and many others, have emerged,
where remote terminals and entry locations are connected to a switched
control computer, an information network.

Today's new generation of networks, both voice and data, can
be used for "revenue-generating" as well as resource-sharing.
New software-expandable "intelligent" (the new word for
programmable) switches and systems are being introduced that work for
the users, whereas before, it often was vice versa. These innovative
switches and systems tie it all together--telex, teletext, data and
packet-switched transmissions, the interfacing of diversified terminals
and automated equipment, voice mail, and more.

Distributed Switches Come

A Bohemia, Long Island, New York, company called Intelligent
Business Communications (IBC) is one of the vendors offering such a new
tie-it-all-together switch that caters to user needs. Its CSX-1024 is a
highly distributed universal switching system that's designed to
make all text services compatible. Multiple systems in a network
provide the user services, perform the network hub function, and handle
all network control center activities.

The evolution of such switches came from both the need to save
transmission dollars by speeding the sending of data (and soon voice)
via packets, with superior accuracy, to anywhere on the globe (and
beyond, as space technology demands), and the desire to have any
terminal be able to communicate with any network, mainframe, PC, or
whatever. Placing a new-generation switch within a network extends the
life of an installed system or base of terminal equipment by permitting
the introduction of new mainframes and terminals without obsoleting the
existing equipment or changing the running software.

There's a large variety of terminal equipment in use today
because each service or mainframe requires its own kind of terminal.
Telex, TWX, IBM and DEC mainframes all use different terminal equipment,
including teletext terminals, word processors, and so on. From these
specialized terminal requirements emerged multiport terminal equipment.
The multiport terminal has the ability to talk to a number of different
networks and mainframes. Even these terminals are limited, but not to
the same magnitude as is the single-purpose terminal.

Interconnectability Arrives

With the new-generation switch (such as the CSX-1024) mainframe
additions, new terminals or new communication services are easily
connected. The switch has the ability to talk to different protocols
and languages in each of its parts, and to convert one protocol to
another. This permits the old mainframe terminal to continue using the
language it presently runs and to talk to the new terminal equipment.
The switch is thus an "integrator," making it possible for the
meeting of new and old without changing either.

The evolutionary progression has been from dedicated terminal
equipment to multiport terminals, to intelligent switches that permit
all terminal equipment to talk to any network or mainframe, to PCs as
the universal terminal, to tie-it-all-together intelligent switches and
networks. (See illustration on the following page for an example of
such a switch's architecture.)

That evolution coincides with the revolution of deregulation, as a
result of which, more and more carriers and methods to communicate from
point-to-point are made available to telecommunications managers.
Fortunately for them, the new-generation switch also is designed to
provide the capacity to track the facilities and equipment used in their
networks. It routes the traffic to the least-cost facility available.
It interfaces different terminal types to all the communication
facilities available. Thus, it produces cost savings, and reduces or
eliminates the need to change existing equipment. Moreover, it expands
or contracts to custom to fit the user's specific needs.

Least-Cost Routing Debuts

A new-generation switch such as the CSX permits use of almost all
transmission facilities and carriers available. Using its routing
functions and billing, multibus and multi-protocol methodology features,
the user can schedule the usage of facilities using lowest-cost first,
with volume sensitivity for peak usage. This reduces overall network
facilities and cost, while universal interfacing and adaptability to new
technology offer the ultimate in flexibility.

Before the advent of intelligent switches, data communications was
limited to the carrier and the dedicated facilities the user had
acquired. Now, the user can interconnect previously incompatible
terminals and facilities and have the freedom to add new facilities
without concern for incompatibilities, since the switch solves this
problem and permits access to new facilities from the existing terminal
base.

The new-generation switch is well-suited, as noted earlier, not
only as a shared-resource switch, especially in a shared-services tenant
environment. It will interface to a large variety of terminal
equipment, allowing tenants freedom of choice and removing the burden
from the landlord of coordinating purchases of communications gear.

Usage-Sensitive Billing Here

In addition, a billing package permits billing the tenants for
those usage-sensitive facilities that each uses. The landlord can thus
offer each tenant a desired grade-of-service without forcing all to bear
the cost. The switch also permits the landlord to "massage"
the network for fault identification, fault isolation and resolution,
and verification of service restoral.

Creation of the state-of-the-art digital switch for communications
combined computer and telecommunications technology to meet the
ever-expanding demand for access to and exchange of information and to
offer a cost-effective means of facilitating communications between
noncompatible systems. Full interworking between all forms of digital
record communication, such as telex, TWX, asynchronous data, synchronous
data and packet networks, is all part of the intelligent switch's
capability to save costs, provide shared resources and produce revenue
for the switch user.

One cost-saving example: Users transmitting data over leased lines are paying dearly for dedicated circuits on a 24-hour-per-day basis even
though actual use amounts to only two or three hours daily. However,
with packet switching, telephone lines can handle data from possibly
several hundred companies at the same time, keeping these lines fully
occupied, while allowing users to pay only for the time actually used.

Although this application was spurred on by interantional usage,
the domestic market is rapidly expanding, as evidenced by trade journal
reports. Digital communications has opened a new wave of opportunities;
integrated-service digital networks are here.

Information Movement Advances

In today's era of information movement, more and more data is
being processed and communicated from the originator to its destination
at incredible speeds and accuracy, permitting small and large user
alike, industry as well as consumers, to tap into the wealth of
information from others (with their permission, of course) and to offer
their input into the system.

i predict that cellular radio, telecommunications and computer
technologies will someday be melded to provide mankind with global
communications unity. For example, in medical diagnostics, more and
more global use of computer-aided noninvasive diagnostic techniques will
be available via the new-generation switches to any location on the
globe.

The new technology-driven information movement is here. To keep
up, we have to increase our training in the engineering and technical
arts and sciences. I believe this rapid, seemingly confusing growth of
technology will benefit mankind in creative problem solving--using the
ingenuity of man and the analytical ability of the machine. The result
will be intensive networking between man and machine to materialize what
we conceive and to communicate it to all--a global cooperative effort in
all fields of endeavor.

One-Tounge Communication Soon

A coming byproduct of today's rapid technology is global and
universal communications, what I call the advent of a
"one-tounge" communication revolution, whereby we can all
communicate with each other, with a set pattern and standard understood
and agreed to by all. Already, one can notice how the globe gets
smaller as communications increase.

For the present, however, we need to concentrate on vendor-user
communication. Technological products must be tailored to be truly
responsive to user needs, to user wants. Users complain that
manufacturers give lip service to their needs, and manufacturers feel
that users are vague in their definitions of both near-term and
long-range communications requirements. Progressive manufacturers are
now aware that they must develop products within the users'
application capabilities, so both sides can satisfy the users' true
requirements. Users must become better strategic-business planners (and
many are) in order to put the control back into their hands and to
identify their true needs.

Telecom Problems Faced Today

Meanwhile, telecommunications managers are constantly confronted by
upper management to cut spiraling communication costs and, at the same
time, to move more and more information. This causes parallel systems
to become installed throughout a company and leads to duplucation and
confusion, with new industry offerings creating rapid obsolescence of
what was recently purchased.

To address these problems, I suggest a three-step approach:

* Install a consolidated network planning and control center, with
the user in control at the helm, working in close cooperation with the
manufacturer.

* Plan one's needs as one plans a business, with a
profit-and-loss statement and a realistic three-to-five year strategic
business plan.